INTERVIEW: Don Jazzy - “Dbanj Use to bug me that he needs beat” (Read and watch Interview)

                
Hip-hop World Magazine conducted an interview with Don Jazzy, a little while back and before the alleged breakup, where he revealed how difficult it was to get to the top. He also reveals that he almost sold the label to Storm Records for 1Million Naira. Obi Asika and Storm Records kept delaying the signing until an endorsement they received for 30Million Naira. AML artists, this kind of grass to grace stories are not uncommon.  There is no easy way out. You gotta put in the work to get to the top, even if you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth like Davido.

“So how did you meet D’Banj?

D’Banj used to come to the studio in the JJC & 419 squad era. I just saw him as very funny character and he used to always bug us; I need a beat, in Nigeria things are popping off. I was like; okay dude, sing, you can’t sing. What can you do, can you rap, no you can’t rap. But he could play the mouth organ,

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I liked the way he used to play the mouth organ and he was very funny, so he used to crack us up. So we preferred to take him when we are going on shows on the road so that he would just be cracking us up. He used to make the road trips short for us; that was basically why we were taking me.

If you watch some videos on Youtube, when we are performing you will see him at the back with his mouth organ, he will just be shouting “kilonshele!”, so that people would notice him. That’s the kind of person D’Banj is, any position you put him, he will stay there but he will try and make sure that you must notice that someone is there. And when I was leaving JJC & 419 Squad to go set up my own stuff, he was the only one that was like; now that everybody was taking a break, since we are close in the studio, that should he follow me. I said “where are you following me to? You are following someone that does not have money. I already know that I have talent, it would work for me at some point but for now I just need to settle my head”. He was like; no, you can do this thing, in the studio everyone knows that you are the one making the beats. I really liked his belief in me from them. I was like; for this guy to do this that you decided to follow me. Since the UK market was petty dominated by JJC & 419 Squad, the Nigerian scene, let’s go to where they don’t know us and we can start from scratch and come up. Let’s go and do an album. So we went to a friend of mine’s studio, I begged him to use the studio. We didn’t have the time, so we rushed the first album in like two weeks and it was done.

As we had that copy like this, oya let’s go to Nigeria now and see what happens. That’s how D’Banj came into the picture. Well the confidence wouldn’t have been there if not that two weeks happened to be around the time they were doing Nigeria’s independence in London and for some reason we had to perform alone instead of with the group, JJC & 419 Squad, as we normally do. We never used to perform individually.




It seems like from the get go, you decided to go with your own record label instead of say, shopping D’Banj to other record labels, why did you decide to do so?

Oh no, we decided to set up our own record label because everybody in Nigeria at that particular time were just setting up record labels. But at some point, there was one time that we almost sold Mo’Hits Records to Storm Records. Things were pretty rough, there is nobody that we didn’t approach, we approached Questionmark, they were our big bosses at that time. They had Asa at that time and we could tell that the record label was pretty buffed up, as in they had cash to spend. Storm Records was doing big things, Kennis Music obviously. Yeah, we pretty much went everywhere. As we came in, we came in like children in the industry; I think that was helped us, really because a lot of people underestimated us, so we were like anybody’s baby. You see the way Wizkid is now, that is the way we were, we were just going from here to there. Every upcoming artiste should listen o, you better do that, jus be running from here to there, it works all the time.